The mother grizzly bear is one of our old, original pieces that we cast and sold when Windstone ( then called Mark Hines Creations) was first started, in 1984.

When we realized that fantasy things-and dragons in particular - sold much better than real animals, we discontinued the entire line of regular creatures and concentrated on weird ones. When we moved our factory from California to Oregon we rediscovered a hoard of old castings that had been packed away unfinished for years. This Bear was one of them. This unpainted old casting has has been newly airbrushed in cinnamon brown with dark trim. She has dark brown glass eyes and is about 8 3/4 inches tall.

This one was sculpted in WED clay, (that is a good-to-sculpt water based clay) using wooden modeling tools. The tool I used most was about the size of a sharpened chopstick ( I don't really remember exactly -this was a long time ago!) This sculpture was cast directly off of the clay original without me having re-worked it in gypsum, this gives the fur texture a very crisp look that my more recent pieces don't have.

Sorry for the belated response. Honest! Is the WED clay less likely to crack than regualr sculpey clay? Also.... That mold still is hating me.... It's nearly destroyed my original each time I've made a mold, so I'm leary of making a 3rd mold.... Perhaps I should sculpt something else and make a mold of that to send you. Now to make something that's only going to need a simple 2 part mold....

Wed will crack like ceramic clay. It is good for quickly making large things that are going to have a mold made on them right away, before it gets any dryer than the leather hard state. I have used it for small things however, it can be dried completely with out cracking if you do it slowly and don't use an armature in the sculpture.It is brittle though. You don't need to send me anything! Keep learning. Plaster casting is extremely difficult. Ceramic casting is a million times easier!